The latest episode of Percy Jackson and The Olympians, “We Take a Zebra to Vegas,” sees our protagonist trio arrive in Las Vegas—as the title suggests—seeking the god Hermes to further their quest. Since Hermes, played here by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is the god of travelers and thieves, they hope he can hitch them a ride to Los Angeles and the entrance of the Underworld.
The only problem is that Hermes is gambling away at one of the tables of the infamous Lotus Hotel and Casino, which is yet another piece of Greek myth transported into the 21st century. In mythology, the lotus-eaters are a people whom the hero Odysseus meets while on his long and torturous journey back home from Troy. The lotus-eaters of the myth ate the fruit of the massive lotus tree at the center of their village, and those fruits kept them in a sort of narcoleptic state.
Percy, Annabeth, and Grover soon discover that the essence of those same lotus fruits is pumped through the vents of the casino, meaning that everyone inside quickly forgets who they are and what their purpose was before stepping in through the building’s door. While the heroes’ realization of just how dangerous this place is happens a bit differently in the show than in the original book, the end result is the same. The sooner they get out of there the better, or they risk succumbing to the effect of the lotus flowers and remain trapped inside the casino for a very long time.
***Spoilers ahead from the Percy Jackson books beyond The Lightning Thief, and so for eventual future seasons of the Percy Jackson and The Olympians show. Be warned.***
That’s the fate of the newly-introduced Augustus the Satyr, who has been inside the casino for quite a handful of years, but it’s also the fate of a couple of characters that OG book readers know very well and probably can’t wait to meet. That might just be me projecting, sure, but I’m willing to bet my impatience in getting to see them is shared by a good chunk of the fandom.
Those characters are, of course, siblings Bianca and Nico di Angelo, children of Hades. Born in the 1930s in Italy, at the time of Percy, Annabeth and Grover’s quest the siblings have been inside the Lotus Hotel and Casino for around seventy years. The fury Alecto—whom we have seen in the show disguised as Percy’s teacher Mrs. Dodds—brought them there at the request of their father Hades, who believed the casino a safe location to keep them away from Zeus’s possibly deadly bolts and also wanted to keep them around beyond the span of a normal human life just in case one of them turned out to be the subject of a pretty massive prophecy about a “child of the Eldest Gods”.
That’s because time passes differently inside the Lotus Casino—what was just a month to Bianca and Nico was almost a century in the outside world, meaning they remained the same age they were when they were brought to Vegas by Alecto. That makes Nico, the younger of the siblings, not older than ten and that is further proof that a little Easter egg of a cameo fans picked up on in “We Take a Zebra to Vegas” is 100% real and true.
“Bianca! Bianca!”
If you listen closely to the background noise in the scene where Grover and Augustus stand in front of the VR gaming station, you can hear a child’s voice scream for “Bianca! Bianca!” It’s there again when Percy and Annabeth pass through the same area of the casino looking for Grover, who’s immersed in a virtual hunt for the long-lost god Pan.
And who could that child be, if not Nico di Angelo calling for his sister? The timelines march up—both siblings are still living inside the casino since Alecto will take them out only after the events of The Lightning Thief before they officially step onto the main story in The Titan’s Curse, the third installment of the Percy Jackson and The Olympians saga. Nico is very much still a child, and the voice we could hear in the episode is definitely a child’s. Not a lot of words could be mistaken for “Bianca.” It’s all there and I have proof.
Plus, what else could be the “few interesting names thrown around [in episode 6]” that Aryan Simhadri, who plays Grover, mentioned in one of the many interviews the three main actors had to promote the show? Exactly. It all comes together.
It’s also not the first time the show makes some vague references to the di Angelo siblings, and Nico especially. The first episode also contained a couple of bits of foreshadowing, so it makes sense that there would be another one in the very locations where Bianca and Nico are at this point in the story. Since an actual cameo was definitely out of the question—I doubt the production has even started to think about casting Bianca and Nico—a nice “auditory” cameo was the next best option. What can I say, I choose to believe—that’s how much my little Italian children of Hades mean to me.
(featured image: DIsney+)
